Life
writing
MITA KAPUR
LIFE
writing is evocative, calling out to a reader in a way fiction cannot. The
parts of the self that find their way into a story are nuggets of gold, leaving
one with traces of another personÕs life. The question of how much of the self
gets written into the narrative remains fluid and varies from book to book.
Sometimes itÕs an entire life that gets fictionalised,
like Charles DickensÕ David Copperfield. Bits and pieces of an authorÕs
life fitting kaleidoscopically into a larger fictional setting has been a
widely used technique by fiction writers, like The Bell Jar by
Sylvia Plath.
Literary boundaries get
diffused across genres, ages, people. Some are satisfied with a peek into
a personalityÕs life through fiction, some are deeply, incessantly obsessed
with seeking scraps of information about how a particular life was lived. The
reasons to reach out to autobiographies and biographies are multiple – a
natural curiosity fuelled by inherited knowledge, myth, the desire to read or
for work. Autobiographies emerged as a sought-after genre to write around the
1800s. It coincided with the rise in interiority of the self, notions of
identity, a penchant to look back and trace a life story not just to know but
also to glance at the milieu in which that person was narrating events from.
An autobiography has the
power to present personal and social history, intensely private and at the same
time overtly public. It embodies the memories of that person and an age.
Conventional historical and autobiographical narratives reflect complexities of
internal and external dilemmas of a personÕs life. An author who embarks on
life writing has to have epistemic and literary potential even while
experimenting with the scope of the genre. Autobiographies from the field of
history complement other forms of representation of the past produced in
fiction writing. Such writers engage with the past creatively, asking questions
along the way, not only about what happened but also what might have happened.
In a sense, the writer is a memory keeper, an eyewitness who also dips into
collective memory, popular culture, notions of identity and of the
surroundings.
Delving into life writing narratives which are a part
of contemporary history, the reader has the liberty to enter into the world of
resistance literature. Omprakash ValmikiÕs autobiographical account –
Joothan – is a stark account of his
life as a Bahujan. The book was the first of its kind in modern India, leaving
in its wake a consciousness of how muddy and denied his life was. Therein comes
a learning, an exposure that leaves the reader shaken, overwhelmed with a
desire to impact social change in a society that still practices the systemic
ostracization of a particular caste. Joothan casts a
deep, hard look at what the nation has made of itself, and of what a person,
with as much right to freedom as another individual, was not allowed to be.
Viramma: Life of an Untouchable is an example of a collaborative autobiography as a
part of resistance literature by Jean-Luc Racine, Josiane Racine, Viramma and John L Varriano. The book was recorded in Tamil
first and then translated into French and English later. VirammaÕs
story mirrors a social history which is pieced from oral and archival records.
Autobiographies are also a deep psychological and socio-cultural interpretation
of the subject and her times. The genre started evolving around the 1800s when
self-reflection became the way to look at an individual self in context with
her environment. It maps the rise of individualism and interpretation.
Biographies are an ancient
form, and in their earlier formative periods they were largely historical and
connected with the passage of civilisations
developing, destroying, reinventing the world. As a larger definition of modernisation crept into different parts of the world, the
notion of telling life stories became complex, changing the creative narrative
to a more flexible and nuanced form. Historical, mythological, political,
geographical, religious, socio-ethnic, environmental narratives have been read
across decades.
An author of a biography has the liberty to analyse, unravel mysteries, connect the dots, highlight the
significant plot points and mistakes. Critical and literary biographies such as
Mehr Afshan FarooqiÕs Ghalib:
A Wilderness at My Doorstep are an exhaustive reading of his life as a
writer. The authorÕs research of existing manuscripts on Ghalib led to this
wonderful exploration of his oeuvre, which helps make better sense of GhalibÕs
art, his life and the age he lived in. Farooqi delved into GhalibÕs engagement
with the Persian and Urdu languages, along with his life that centred around demystifying human nature.
Kipling Sahib India and the Making of Rudyard Kipling by Charles
Allen, another critical biography, focuses on KiplingÕs years in India that led
to the writing of Jungle Book and Kim. He was considered to be a
fascinating storyteller and Allen has done justice to the person inside
Kipling, and what made Kipling spin yarns the way he did, the roots of his
imagination and how his circumstances in India influenced his writing. Kipling
did not really like the years he spent in India and that probably fuelled his
creativity.
Writers play with memory.
When writing fiction, they create memories via characters. While writing
autobiographies they lay bare their own (well, hopefully, thereÕs no holding
back there) and while writing biographies, the experience becomes immersive
with the three-sixty-degree consumption of the subjectÕs life and times.
Memoirs are intimate, granular, sinking underneath the skin of the person,
unblocked and unplugged.
I go back to Kamaladevi ChattopadhyayÕs Inner Recesses Outer Spaces,
where she symbolises the individual as a human being,
giving a towering stature to the personhood that soars high and tall with
dignity. She narrates incidents from her life with a detachment that quietens
the narrative but stands deafeningly giant like through her actions, her
beliefs, her convictions. It is a joy to read the fulsome rich life lived
through the prism of her many loves – the nation and its people, its
culture and its various aspects.
Biographies of kings and queens have fascinated us for
various reasons. They sweep us into the historicity of an age and time, mostly
decadent and luxurious, but also deeply troubled with political strategies and
wars. Ira MukhotyÕs Akbar the Great Mughal: The
Definitive Biography is one such jewel, immersed in what the title of the
book promises with quiet authority. Akbar as a king, a leader, has been written
about for his larger-than-life persona, the pluralism and multi-culturalism
that his reign stood for, and the writer does justice to his legacy with her
strong narrative skills.
Humanising a towering personality like Akbar demands the skill
of a storyteller. IraÕs prose makes him come alive. The Last King in India:Wajid Ali Shah by Rosie
Llewellyn-Jones and The Career and Legend of Vasco Da Gama by Sanjay
Subrahmanyam are also enriching reading for those who gravitate towards
history.
With social biographies,
the line between history, sociology and anthropology merges, and there are some
books that stand out not just because of the cartography of related facts but
simply because they give an insight into how the subjectÕs ecosystem support or
deconstruct the story.The 1982-83 Bombay Textile
Strike and the Unmaking of a LabourerÕs City by
Hub Van Wersch stands out as a seminal work. It is a
comprehensive account of how the textile strike gathered lakhs of mill workers,
lasted for a year and a half, and is considered one of the most impactful
strikes in any industry the world over. The author had his ear to the ground,
basing his writing on intense research, analysing the
length and breadth of its path and what it led to in the future for the textile
industry at large. The strike changed the face and nature of Bombay as a city.
India Moving: A History
of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe encapsulates socio-economic history like a detailed
satellite viewing of mass migrations of the Indian population around the Indian
subcontinent and across the globe. The book is a document of what millions of
people went through when they moved voluntarily or involuntarily, how slave
trade affected lives, refugee movement, how business communities moved and set
up base, mass migration from Bihar and Kerala to the northern and central parts
of India. The scale and sensitivity of the book is expansive, well argued and
well-wrought.
Chinmay Tumbe has written, in
his inimitable style, another important book, The Age of Pandemics and how
They Shaped India and the World – 1817-1920. Social, political and
economic biographies inhabit not just a geographical area but also work as an
archive of societal constructs, deconstructs of the economy, of culture, the
dignity of human lives juxtaposed against natural and manmade disasters. Such
books become significant archives and remain relevant across the ages.
No one does it better than Sunil Amrith
in Unruly Waters when youÕre on the lookout for environmental
biographies. A wide-ranging history of water, the narrative is a prism of
cross-connections between British India and post-Independence India. ItÕs not
just a story of a geographical phenomenon but also of a people that get swept
along with the course it charts naturally and then, how it gets subjected to
the will of people in power. It makes for a refractive, diagnostic layering of
many histories, life stories of lakhs of people across generations. If it was
fiction, weÕd call it an intergenerational family saga with a sweeping vision
intertwined with stories of societies, their struggles, their wins, along with
natural evolution. Unfortunately, itÕs all too real.
Another environmental
biography that has left an indelible mark on the genre is The Unquiet River:
A Biography of the Brahmaputra by Arupjyoti Saikia. He spent a few years trying to understand, live
with and experience this mighty river that has continually been witness to eons
of history since early settlers in the 2nd century AD, culture, while
simultaneously giving birth to new movements in socio economic, political,
artistic, environ-mental spheres. Saikia spent a lot
of time with people who lived on the BrahmaputraÕs banks, studied the
literature, religious texts, music, food, tribal folklore to gather the
minutest details, to spin a narrative around the Brahmaputra. It is not a
simple subject to write about. The river is a geological and ecological wonder,
and has played the role of a major protagonist in the meta-narrative of the
Indian subcontinent.
Corporate biographies are
abundant in the West but there are a few that stand out from the Indian
publishing turf. Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism by
Mircea Raianu spans the course of a 150-year long
history. The TataÕs spread their wingspan over textiles, steel, hydroelectric
power, automobile, and aviation. It is an expansive book in which Mircea Raianu spins the story around the fortunes of a family run
business that was born in a British ruled India but went on to garner the
worldÕs attention with its all-conquering growth. The Tatas became symbols of
growth, development, modernisation, inextricably
intertwining their history with that of the nation.
Biographies set in the world of aesthetics give us an
insight into a fascinating world of craft, vocation and livelihood, of a
tangible heritage being perpetuated. Jenny HousegoÕs A
Woven Life is a journey through Britain after the Second World War, of a
young woman exploring culture and textile, her adventures taking her thousands
of miles away from where she grew up, to the East, unveiling to her its many
beautiful gifts.
JennyÕs story flows between
revealing to the reader glimpses of her life and taking on a larger
conversation on culture. The book takes us through how her love for textiles
grew while working at a museum in London. Her journeys through Asia led to her
education and growth. The foundation of the well known Shades of India and
Kashmir Loom as successful handloom and textile businesses are an inspiration
for young India to embrace its roots. It has multiple narratives embedded in
it, making it a work of cultural significance.
Balkrishna Doshi looked at
built structures as entities that embodied the human spirit that represented
elements from the past moving fluidly into the present and staying put for the
future. A sense of permanency that had a pulse because it was about the life of
communities. His biography, Paths Uncharted, is the scintillating
account of IndiaÕs foremost architect. Doshi is respected as a thought leader
of design in India because he interpreted the built form socially, culturally
and economically, giving it a broad spectrum. He took the landscape, community
traditions and natureÕs ways into account while dealing with his subject,
understanding that the individual was always placed in the context of their
surroundings.
One of the most delightful,
sparkling books that stand out in my memory is RagaÕn
Josh: Stories from a Musical Life by Sheila Dhar. The book has a surround
sound effect from the first page, with DharÕs naturally effervescent way of
skipping from one story into another. Narrating her closest memories since she
was sixteen, she has unwittingly knitted music with food adding a velvety
richness to a book on music. Unpretentious, charming yet full bodied with her
knowledge of classical music, its magic and its mysteries, she writes of the
fluidity of the music scene in contemporary India.
In all its forms, life
writing is the journey of humans connecting with each other, civilizations
exchanging ideas. Anne FrankÕs The Diary of a Young Girl is an
unassuming giant of the genre, showing generation after generation that courage
doesnÕt need to roar to be heard. Peering into anotherÕs life can open many
doors in our own, perhaps thatÕs why we find such relief in their stories.